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About Me

I am a Ph.D. student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. I study the History of Biblical Interpretation, which includes Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. My interests are religion, politics, TV, movies, and reading.

Monday, January 14, 2013

John and Realized Eschatology

For my write-up today on Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I'll use as my starting-point something that I wrote in a post a while back, when I was blogging through volume 4 of John Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. I was talking about the issue of realized eschatology, and what I said referred to an example of what that means. I said:

"I
enjoyed Meier’s discussion of the Gospel of John. The way Meier tells
it, the Gospel of John differed from the synoptics on the issue of the
coming of the Son of Man...The synoptics thought that the Son of Man
would come in the future as a judge, after the resurrection of Jesus
Christ...In the Gospel of John, however, the belief is that the coming
of the Son of Man occurred at Jesus’ first coming, which is why John has
a realized eschatology in which Jesus is acting as judge while he is on
earth, and people are judged already according to how they view
Jesus...Meier may be on to something, but I don’t treat his description
as absolute...[T]he Gospel of John contains a concept of futurist
eschatology, not just present judgment (John 5:28-29; 6:40)."

Realized
eschatology has been a prominent theme in my reading thus far of Lee's
book, and I'm sure that it will be prominent in the rest of the book, as
well. Lee, like many scholars, maintains that the Gospel of John has a
realized eschatology. Eternal life is something that people
can enjoy now, for "It is to be lifted up above this base existence into
the joy and peace that belong to God" (page 77), an idea that overlaps
with things that the first century Jewish philosopher Philo of
Alexandria affirmed. Today, Ezekiel's promises that people
would be washed in the Spirit and that Israel would be resurrected are
being fulfilled, as people are "created anew" and are "embracing the
meaning of life intended by God" (page 70). The promise that
God will dwell in people's midst has been fulfilled in the incarnation
of the Word in Jesus Christ. People were judged already while Jesus was
on earth, based on their view of Jesus. And the new Temple and
new Jerusalem are present now, as the Spirit dwells within a church
that consists of Jews and Gentiles, who fellowship with God and with
each other.

But what about the passage that I cited in my
post----John 5:28-29, which affirms that there will come a
resurrection, as those who did good deeds are resurrected unto life,
whereas those who did evil deeds are resurrected unto judgment? Lee
states on page 113:

"Does Jesus teach realized eschatology, future
eschatology, or some combination of the two? Verses 28 and 29 appear
to undermine the rest of the Gospel's teachings, particularly its
this-worldly life just promised in [John 5:26-27], so much so that some
scholars conclude verses 28-29 must be a later addition...But is it
possible that no contradiction exists at all...? Put another way, how
quickly does Jesus' proclamation of the future ('an hour is coming')
become John's past ('and now is')? At the hour of Jesus' death? At his
Resurrection?" Lee appears to be arguing that John could have
envisioned John 5:28-29 being realized at Jesus' death or resurrection.
Jesus' death is important in John's Gospel, according to Lee. On pages
56-57, Lee says that, when Jesus tells his mother in John 2:4 that his
hour is not yet come, he means Jesus' "appointed death", which is when
Jesus is glorified and victorious over the world and is a prerequisite
for the rebuilding of the Temple.

According
to Lee, even Paul, Matthew, and other Christians who had a futurist
eschatology maintained that, in a sense, eschatological promises were
being realized in their own time. Paul, according to Lee, believed that
Jesus' resurrection indicated that "the general resurrection has begun,
and the new age is upon us" (page 78). Lee says regarding I
Corinthians 15, particularly the verse that says, "if the dead are not
raised, then Christ has not been raised": "Try to rid your mind of the
misconception that Paul argues for a future resurrection. He does not
say 'if you do not believe the dead will someday rise' but rather 'if you do not believe the dead are raised.'" But
did Paul lack a futurist eschatology? I do not entirely know how Lee
addresses this question, but one can point to such things as Paul's
references to the Second Coming of Christ (I Thessalonians 4) and the
renewal of the cosmos (Romans 8) to argue that Paul indeed had a
futurist eschatology. But he may have believed that the end was near
because, already in his time, an eschatological fulfillment of promises
was occurring, and in some cases had occurred.

Regarding
Matthew, Matthew in Lee's book for some time agreed with John the
Revelator's view that Christ would soon return and overthrow evil, and
yet, as John reminds Matthew, even Matthew presented graves being opened
and people rising from the dead soon after Jesus' death and
resurrection (Matthew 27:51-53), and Matthew in Lee's book regarded that
as a fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy about the opening of graves
(Ezekiel 37). Perhaps Matthew had both a realized and also a
futurist eschatology: he believed that eschatological promises were
being fulfilled, and yet he anticipated a fuller fulfillment.

My
impression is that Lee and many biblical scholars believe that John
took realized eschatology further, to the point that it eclipsed or even
supplanted any futurist eschatology. On pages 94-95, the
character Ruth says something that's quite intriguing: "When John dies,
everything will change. He is the final apostle, the last living person
to have walked with Jesus. And Jesus hinted that John would live to
see him return. Once John dies, we can get on with being Christians, no
longer peering up at the clouds, waiting for the Messiah to light up
the skies. Our appointed deacons can finally exercise their authority
without John's overbearing presence. Those who have lost heart can
finally let go." In a sense, the picture I get is that a
realized eschatology----one that focuses on the here-and-now rather than
eagerly expecting for a cataclysmic end to come from right around the
corner----is necessary for people to heal from their disappointed hopes,
and for the church to be the church.

The question that I have is this: What hope does a realized eschatology actually provide?
If this is all there is, then that's pretty sad! Moreover, if Jesus
through the incarnation fulfilled the promise that God would dwell among
us, where does that leave us now, when God is no longer incarnate among
us? Perhaps that's why Jesus' promise in John's Gospel about sending
the Spirit is so important.

I one time took a Greek New
Testament class on the Gospel of John, and the professor said that John
believed in an afterlife, only he envisioned Christians going to heaven
right after their physical death. I have questions about
that. First of all, would that count as a resurrection, since the soul
leaving the body has been argued to be different from a resurrection (at
least according to N.T. Wright)? Second, what exactly did Jesus bring
that was new? Wasn't there already a belief that souls would go to
heaven----by Philo and others within Second Temple Judaism? Perhaps
Jesus moved the afterlife for the righteous into heaven, whereas before
that all souls went to Hades, according to a certain strand of thought.

2 comments:

This had better not be it! The coming Kingdom had better be 'perfect'. There are strands in theology that argue God didn't need to make a perfect creation in order not to be responsible for the distress of sentient and cognitive creatures in an imperfect world (I have in mind the Thomist Catholic Herbert McCabe). As far as I can see, that would also allow continuing distress in heaven! That won't do at all. I reckon their philosophical logic might have things to be said for it, but other considerations would more strongly militate against it. Though, I think (and hope) McCabe's intention was to counter purely philosophical objections to God's Goodness and power, not all considerations.

Wright doesn't understand that his idea of the renewed Earth and resurrection are not different than a scenario of going to Heaven. He has wasted people's time with his writings on the matter. Plus, he has left himself open to being interpreted as holding similar ideas to the unhelpful ones of the Jehovah's Witnesses about the future life. Unfortunately, these sorts of ideas are also liked by very many Christians, who seem to forsee the future life as much like now, only with no bad bits. That seems to me too limited.